Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton

St. Elizabeth Ann Seton

“He is more within us than we are ourselves.”

St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, or as we knew her when we were children, Mother Seton, is the first American-born Saint we have written about. She was born in New York City, just as we were. When I was a child, I attended a Catholic parochial school, St. Athanasius in the Bronx, taught by those beautiful Sisters of Charity. They wore funny little bonnets which covered their heads, like the pictures you see of Mother Seton, not the type we typically identified with Nuns, especially after having seen Ingrid Bergman in “The Bells of St. Mary.” These good Sisters of Charity would read to us from the Lives of the Saints two or three times a week as I recall. These were exciting stories of holy people who had lived good lives, set an example for the world, and went to Heaven. Usually, there were Miracles attached to their lives, or apparitions of Our Lord Jesus and His Mother Mary. 

Open by Steve Bailey

Transcript

St. Elizabeth Ann Seton

“He is more within us than we are ourselves.”

St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, or as we knew her when we were children, Mother Seton, is the first American-born Saint we have written about. She was born in New York City, just as we were. When I was a child, I attended a Catholic parochial school, St. Athanasius in the Bronx, taught by those beautiful Sisters of Charity. They wore funny little bonnets which covered their heads, like the pictures you see of Mother Seton, not the type we typically identified with Nuns, especially after having seen Ingrid Bergman in “The Bells of St. Mary.” These good Sisters of Charity would read to us from the Lives of the Saints two or three times a week as I recall. These were exciting stories of holy people who had lived good lives, set an example for the world, and went to Heaven. Usually, there were Miracles attached to their lives, or apparitions of Our Lord Jesus and His Mother Mary. 

In 1975, we taught CCD to second-graders. Every time we met, we would tell them the story of a Saint whose Feast Day fell on that week. We called them “Super Saints.” We’d make the Superman insignia on the blackboard, only we’d make two S’s for Super Saint. Being as how they were little people, we didn’t think they heard a word we told them. But then at Parent-Teacher meetings, when the parents told us how their children came home and told them about this Saint or that one, we knew the Lord had gotten the message across to them. We believe the moving force behind this book and television series came from the stories we heard from these beautiful Sisters of Charity. 

These sisters would also tell us stories about their Foundress, Mother Seton, who was not yet a Saint. But she was a very special lady who did great things against tremendous odds, and that’s usually the stuff that Saints are made of. So we prayed with the sisters that she would someday become a Saint. The Cause for her Canonization had not been opened at that time, but we didn’t know anything about those things. She was a holy lady, and would definitely become a Saint. So all through elementary school, we prayed with the sisters for the Canonization of Mother Seton. But at thirteen, I graduated from that elementary school, went on to High School, and she and her nuns went completely out of my mind. The next time I remember hearing anything about Mother Seton, I had just turned forty years old and five days later on the following Sunday she was canonized a Saint, the first American-born citizen to be raised to the Communion of Saints. 

Elizabeth Ann Seton really fits the description of a woman for all seasons. She is truly a role model for women of today. Although she was always a very refined lady, she never shrunk from any kind of work which would help her or her family, whether it be her children or her ladies. She was a personification of motherhood all her life. She was a Protestant who converted after the death of her husband. She was a widow, a single mother, raising five children under the most impossible circumstances in a male-oriented world; she became a nun, and founded a religious community; you name it, Elizabeth Seton did it. Perhaps because she was such a beautiful girl, and was raised in New York society of the period, it seemed to many that she was able to just breeze through life doing wonderful things for the people of God, for the Church and for her family, without raising a bead of perspiration. Her life was anything but that. 

However, we are getting ahead of herself. Because the life of Elizabeth Seton covers such a broad spectrum, we wonder sometimes where to begin. There are so many aspects we want to cover, so many important things to tell you, we want to be sure not to leave anything out. But a good rule of thumb is always to begin at the beginning, and let the Lord lead you to where He wants you to go. When He’s finished instructing, it’s time to end the chapter. 

Allow me to introduce you to the girl, woman, mother, teacher, Foundress, Saint for whom my precious Grammar School teachers, the Sisters of Charity were praying all those years when I was young, and for the rest of their lives, no doubt. Come and join a woman on her Journey to Sainthood, Elizabeth Ann Seton.

New York City was abuzz with activity in 1774. It was two years before we, the people, would declare our Independence from Britain. So while it was exciting in retrospect, it was also covered by a heavy cloud of apprehension. The Boston Tea Party, staged the year before, which brought home the fact that the people of this new world were not happy being taxed up to their hip-boots, without representation. This had not received any positive reaction from the British. But it did send a strong message across the sea that there was unrest and dissatisfaction in the colonies from the people who were supplying a great deal of income to the mother country. New York was a major port and center for immigrants who come from all over the world. A great deal of income was funneling through this town. However, everyone in New York was walking very gingerly, not knowing what next week or next month would bring from the British. 

All this tension seemed like a very dim far-off sound to the Bayley family on August 28, 1774, as a newborn baby's cry filled the air. It was the Feast of St. Augustine, but they probably didn't realize it, not being Catholic. However, the Lord knew it, and St. Augustine knew it. So as a special gift to this bold convert, whose mother prayed all those years for his conversion, Our Lord gave St. Augustine on his Feast day, the gift of Elizabeth Ann Bayley. 

Nothing is by coincidence. In God's dimension, coincidence does not exist, unless it's Holy Coincidence. So in order to be fully understood, this miracle of our Saint being born on the feast of another powerful Saint, convert, founder of a religious community, Doctor of the Church, the miracle has to be examined in the light of the background from which she came. 

Elizabeth Ann Bayley was from a prominent New York family. They had been part of British aristocracy in the old country, and were making quite a name for themselves in this, the new England. Her father, Richard Bayley, was supposed to be an Episcopalian, but he seemed to embrace a fashionable heresy of the time called Deism, popular because it did not really lend its support to any religion. “Deism accepts the presence of a sort of god who exists and created the world and established certain laws of nature. But Deists maintain that God is not involved in our day-to-day pilgrimage of life, and reject any kind of formal religion or religious practices.” Now I must say that to my way of thinking, Deism is just a term for people who don’t believe in religion at all, but want to be Social Christians. For Richard Bayley, Elizabeth’s father, religion did not play a part in his life. She recalled that she never heard him mention the name of God in his lifetime, except for once, on his deathbed. That was Elizabeth’s religious background on her father’s side. 

Her mother, Catherine Charlton, was a true Episcopalian, the daughter of an Episcopalian minister, Reverend Richard Charlton, pastor of St. Andrew’s Church in Staten Island, New York. We have to believe that Elizabeth received her knowledge of Christianity from this grandfather. She must also have been touched by his great zeal for the people, especially the blacks who were living in poverty in New York City at that time. Of a total population of approximately 30,000 people in 1774, 5,000 were black. So there was a large flock for Pastor Charlton to minister to. 

We’re not sure how close the Bayleys were to the Charltons. Richard Bayley, a successful doctor and surgeon, was in partnership with Catherine’s brother Dr. John Charlton, but while Richard and Catherine both lived in Staten Island when they were married, they chose to be married in New Jersey by a different Episcopal minister, rather than at the church where Catherine’s father was pastor. It is also believed that Elizabeth was not baptized by her grandfather or at his church. He kept meticulous records, and there is no record in his church of Elizabeth having been baptized there. There is the suggestion of some ill feelings between the two families. It’s never explained why that might have been or how it came about. 

Richard was in love with his career. Medicine was the other woman in his life. He thought nothing of leaving his family for two years at a time to go off to England to study medicine. The period of time which he chose to do this was not the best either. Relations between the colonies and the British seemed to break down more and more with each passing year. He had gone to England before Elizabeth was born, actually in 1769, the year he and Catherine were married. Their first child, Mary Magdalen, was born while he was in England. She was over a year old when he returned. Then he left them soon after Elizabeth was born, again to England to study. 

Now it was 1775. Remember, Elizabeth was born in 1774, when the threat of war was fast becoming a reality. He was not gone a few weeks to England when war broke out between the colonies and England. The Revolutionary War had begun. When Richard finally found his way home on July 12, 1776, he was wearing a British uniform as a surgeon. Now without taking Richard’s side, he was British. He was born in Connecticut, but his loyalties were with the British. Well, actually, everyone who had any social standing was loyal to the British. Most of the revolutionaries were common folk, like you and me. 

But the bulk of the people in what was then the thirteen colonies, knew only one government, that of Grand Brittania. There was no United States; there was not even a Revolutionary government in effect, in 1776. We had just declared our independence from England on July 4th, eight days before Richard came home. The way the whole thing was resolved after the Revolutionary War was over and the United States of America was formed, seemed to be; if you will be patriotic to the new country, and vow allegiance to it, you are an American citizen and all is forgiven. This might be an oversimplification, but basically that was it. We had to get on with the task of building a country. There was no time for vendettas or revenge. We needed all the talent we could muster. Richard Bayley was a good surgeon. The United States needed him. He needed this country. That was it.

Elizabeth’s mother, Catherine, was a casualty, not so much of the war, but maybe that was part of it. Perhaps she died because she did not feel loved. Her husband never showed any signs of caring for her or his family. Well, he did love them in his fashion, but they were way down the list of priorities in his life. However, when she was pregnant with their third child, which eventually was the cause of her death, he did try to get leave to come home, and finally gave up his commission with the Military in order to return home. He got there just in time to see the birth of the daughter and the death of the wife. She died on May 8, 1777. Elizabeth had been without a father all her life; now she was without a mother as well. This third child, Catherine, whose birth was the cause of mother Catherine’s death, died two years later. Also sadly, her grandfather on her mother’s side, Pastor Richard Charlton, died less than six months after his daughter, Catherine. Elizabeth and her sister Mary Magdalen had no one except a father they hardly knew. 

Things did not get better for Elizabeth Ann Bayley. Her father married a girl almost half his age, who was in high society. She was the daughter of the family who began the Roosevelt clan in New York. The girl, Charlotte Barclay, never took to Elizabeth or her sister. She took care of them as was required, but never loved them. Elizabeth, for her part, never had a loving word to say about this step-parent. To compound the injury to the children, the second wife Charlotte gave more love and attention to the seven children she sired with Richard Bayley than the two she was stuck with at marriage. 

The father also showed no great love for these two daughters when they were young. We can’t figure out what Elizabeth and her sister did to the old man to make him treat them so poorly. Were they living signs of how shabbily he had treated his first wife? Was he the cause, to a degree, by his abandonment and lack of caring, of Catherine Charlton Bayley’s premature death? It’s all speculation, except that when Richard Bayley died, he left everything he had to people other than these two children. The bulk of his estate went to his wife Charlotte and her brood. Another valuable piece of property was left to his mother, who did not need it in the least. So these two dear children, who were born into the cream of society, did not reap the benefits of the good life.11

To give the father and step-mother some credit, the children did not live a Cinderella’s life. They were given all that was necessary to raise them in a manner which would not scream out scandal to New York society. But the scandal was there nevertheless, and should have been screamed out. They were never given love. They deserved love, but never got it. That was more a slap in the face than if they had been treated like Cinderellas. They were sent to the best schools, and required to study subjects which would make them acceptable in high society atmosphere, such as the study of French and music. Elizabeth did not care for that much, but in later years, was grateful she had studied these subjects. So in that sense the Bayleys treated them adequately. 

Charlotte also taught the children a sense of God. Elizabeth gives Charlotte credit for having taught her how to pray, and how to conceive God. This was possibly the greatest gift she was given in her childhood, one which she would hold onto and not let go. She found God in all this misery, and she could count on that God as a stabilizing force in her life. He was there always; He never left her. He taught her. He loved her. He didn’t change like the wind, as so many others in her life had. She wrote of her thoughts of God many years later, “Every little leaf and flower, or animal, insect, shades of clouds, or waving trees, were objects of vacant unconnected thoughts of God and Heaven.” 

Mary and Elizabeth were shipped off to their uncle’s estate in New Rochelle, in Westchester county. He was Richard’s brother, who had semi-retired to that area upstate. He was very loving to the girls. He was completely different from his brother in personality. His family loved Mary and Elizabeth as did many cousins, aunts and uncles, all of whom lived in that area. To be honest, it was a better life for the girls than in New York City with their father and step-family. But they were left there for four years! The question that has to shout out to any Christian is why? What did they do so terrible? 

Mary and Elizabeth returned to New York in 1786, for whatever reason, guilt, or perhaps Charlotte needed help with the little ones, and thought these two older ones could relieve her of her burden. They stayed for about two years, until April 1788, when a major scandal erupted about doctors in the hospital, using bodies which had been robbed from their graves, as experiments for medical studies. It took on a ghoulish tone, as New Yorkers believed their loved ones were being uprooted from their graves for these fiendish experiments. Riots broke out in the streets, with people trying to find doctors to punish for what they believed was an atrocity. It grew to fever pitch, with police shooting at the mobs and killing some. 

Brave Richard Bayley, who may have been responsible for some of what was going on, took this as a sign to go to England to study some more. He did to Charlotte what he had done to her predecessor on more than one occasion. He left her and the children of both marriages on their own while he fled to England for a year. He never contacted any of them for that entire time. He had no idea how his family was faring during his absence, and they didn’t know if he was alive or dead. Things could not have been going too well for Mary and Elizabeth with Charlotte, their step-mother, because this would have been a perfect time for them to bond, as well as for the girls to help her with her seven children. But the two stepchildren were shipped back to New Rochelle again. 

Elizabeth was fourteen years old by this time. She had been used like an emotional yo-yo for most of her life. Her natural adolescent emotions were kicking in and she went through periods of the highest highs and the lowest lows. Although the family in New Rochelle tried to be supportive, they were not her mother or father; they were aunts and uncles. She was sure her father couldn’t care less about her well-being. She may have been right! She also didn’t know if he was alive. She looked at every cloud to see if her mother or her little sister Kitty (Catherine) might be there to talk to her. She had no one...except God. 

Again, a paradox in the life of this powerful Catholic Saint is that her connection with God during her childhood and early teen years was through a Huguenot aunt who taught her all about Christianity. The only problem is that the aunt could not possibly have taught the child objectively, as the Huguenots were the most passionate Anti-Catholic Protestants in Europe. So while Elizabeth 

The followers of Calvin in France were nicknamed Huguenots. The Huguenots suppressed Catholics wherever they could muster power. They hated Catholics more than any Protestant denomination.never had any desire to join the Catholic Church as a young girl, part of the great miracle is that she didn’t hate the Catholic Church and everything to do with it. If we were to recap, a young society girl of New York City, born Protestant but raised without any religious affiliation, abandoned by her father, embraced by a Huguenot aunt, would eventually convert to Catholicism and be the Foundress of a religious community in this country, sounds very far-fetched, if not downright impossible. But with God, nothing is impossible. 

We don’t want to dwell on her struggles as a young girl. But you must know about them so that you can realize the great miracle which was performed by Our Lord to transform this girl, who should have grown up a very bitter, unhappy adult, into the mother, not only of her own children, but of the many daughters the Lord would send her to parent in her ministry. Through this miracle of the Lord, Elizabeth grew beyond those early years to fulfill her destiny. 

Her exile from home and family continued in 1791. The year before, her sister Mary Magdalen had married. For her, the years of unhappiness of not belonging had come to an end. She was five years older than Elizabeth, so one might say she had paid her dues. It was time for a little happiness in her life. It came in the form of Dr. Wright Post, who had been one of Richard Bayley’s medical students. While Elizabeth was happy for her sister, she was now alone. She could not stay in New Rochelle. She had always felt she did not belong there, although they had treated her as one of the family. But they were not her family. Her family was in New York City. But when she returned there, it was obvious in a short period of time that she was not welcome there, and so she spent the next four years traveling between her sister’s house in New York City and an aunt on her mother’s side in Staten Island. 

Her time was to come through a prince charming made in Heaven, William Magee Seton. They had probably known each other all their lives, but the six years difference in their ages put them in separate worlds. It wasn’t until Elizabeth blossomed into a breathtakingly beautiful sixteen year old that William was knocked off his proverbial feet. 

This is not unusual. Boys and girls of that age difference can be friends for years until the girl develops into a young lady. First the young boy cannot believe this is the same girl he knew all those years. Then he can’t believe he didn’t latch onto her years ago. Then he grabs her before it’s too late. For her part, the girl cannot understand how this miraculous transformation has taken place in this young man whom she may have secretly loved for years, and she doesn’t care. She thanks God and goes with it. 

They courted happily through the next few years, living that honeymoon relationship where they could not bear to be separated from each other. The way young people of our time are on the phone with each other so much, young people of their time constantly sent each other notes, even if they were going to see each other the same day. Their romance culminated in a storybook wedding on January 25, 1794, when they were married in sister Mary and brother-in-law Wright’s home. The groom was twenty five years old. Elizabeth was nineteen. The world was their oyster. 

They lived four glorious years. They were the toast of the town. President Washington had taken up residence in the City, and there were balls and parties galore. And being part of the city’s nobility, so to speak, they were part of all that happened. They bought their first house on Wall Street, just a few doors down from the Alexander Hamiltons. They had it decorated just they way they wanted it, and began to build a family. Childbearing was not easy for Elizabeth. She had three children and was pregnant with the fourth when tragedy struck. 

Will’s father died, leaving seven children to be taken care of plus a business that was having difficulties. Will was the oldest, and was given that responsibility. Poor Elizabeth at her young age, was struggling with her fourth pregnancy and her husband’s downcast spirits. They had to give up their house on Wall Street, which just about killed Elizabeth. It was the only house in her twenty-four years which she could call her own. Now they had to move into Will Sr.’s house, because it could accommodate the larger family. She also had to take on a role in the failing business. Between the stress of her family situation and that of the business, she and her baby almost died in the childbirth of her fourth child. Ironically, it was her father, Dr. Richard Bayley, who saved mother and child. He actually breathed life into the child. Possibly, in repayment for this, they named the child after him, Richard Bayley Seton. 

That summer, it was as if all the powers of hell raged against Elizabeth Seton and her family. First one child became ill. Then her little one, Richard had problems. They moved out of New York City to what would be considered today uptown, around Seventy-seventh street. In the City, Yellow Fever had broken out and became a great plague. Elizabeth’s father spent most of his time working with the stricken. Elizabeth was having trouble with her eyesight, in addition to boils on her body. Will commuted back and forth until he came down with a slight case of Yellow Fever, at which time he had to stay in the family home uptown. He was able to overcome it, but he had to stay away from the downtown section of New York until that dreaded summer of 1798 was over. 

But the fall and winter of that year were even worse, not due to physical illness but the rapid decline of the business which Will’s father had left in his hands. Will fell into a tremendous depression. He felt the entire burden of taking care of the business and his seven brothers and sisters rested on his shoulders. His father had been a dynamic businessman, well respected and shrewd, but honest. This young man had the honesty, but not the business acumen of the father, nor his standing in the worldwide business community. People tended to take advantage of him because he was vulnerable. 

By the end of December, 1800 the business was finished. Will Seton filed for bankruptcy, making a private vow to pay every last penny to his debtors. In those days, the bankruptcy laws were different from today. If a man owed creditors and did not file for bankruptcy, he could be put into debtor’s prison. If he did file, he did not have to pay anything other than what he possessed. So Elizabeth, trying to save her husband the final humiliation of listing all their possessions, even to the pairs of socks and underwear which they owned, went through the list with the representative from the Bankruptcy court. Although they were prepared for the worst, they were allowed to stay in their home for another six months. But it was just forestalling the inevitable. They had lost their social standing in New York society. They had lost their beautiful home on Wall Street. His business which had been owned by his father, and which had supported so many of the family, was gone. For William Seton, it was a total disaster. 

But it was not really for Elizabeth Seton. This may have been the time which brought her closer to the Lord, and actually headed her in the direction she was to inevitably take. It was as if the Lord was stripping her of everything so that He could remove the scales from her eyes and she could see clearly where she was going and what she was to do. There’s an expression, “When there doesn’t seem to be any other option, the Lord must be pointing you in the right direction.” There is a lot of truth in that. We recall some years ago having gone into Louisiana and Texas to give talks at Church Missions. This was right after most of the people had suffered tremendous financial losses, the oil industry having shut down in those states. We recall hearing people on line, waiting for us to sign books, talking to each other. 

“I didn’t think I was going to make it tonight. I ran out of gas, and I don’t have enough money to fill up the tank. But I had to be here.” 

“I just lost my job today on the oil rigs. Praise God, I feel free.” 

“I thought I was going to lose my marriage when we were in that country club. Thank God He took all that away from us. We’re free in the Lord.” 

It was hard to understand what those people were saying, how they could be happy in the midst of tragedy. But we hadn’t walked in their shoes. We didn’t know they were on the brink of despair with all the possessions money could buy. We didn’t realize how they were losing their souls through the country clubs and the flirtations with the tennis pro or the lifeguards or the girls at the restaurant or cocktail lounge at the 18th hole, the permissiveness and wife-swapping, drugs and alcoholism and on and on. The Lord had given them the gift of stripping them of their excesses, and freed them of their dependence on things and people. He focused them on the treasures that had true value. “Where your treasure is, that’s where your heart lies.” 

We see in the biography of Elizabeth Bayley Seton how her thoughts went from the frivolous to the spiritual. God had always been an equation in her life, but He was very vague to her. In a happier time, when she had first moved into the house on Wall Street, she wrote: “My own home at 20 - the world - that and heaven too - quite impossible. My God, if I enjoy this, I lose You - yet no true thought of Who I lose, rather fear of hell and (of being) shut out from Heaven.” 

Truly God was part of her life, but she didn’t really know Who He was or what part He played in her day-to-day existence. As all the gifts she had been given were taken away, one by one, her mind and soul focused more clearly on the God in her life. She had taken God seriously, but had never taken any form of organized religion earnestly. She attended services at the Episcopalian Church; but she wore a Catholic crucifix! Her children were baptized Episcopalian, and yet she was greatly influenced by Calvinist philosophies, due, no doubt to her aunt’s teaching her Huguenot errors when she was young. She believed in the Angels and longed for the peace of living in a cloister. The Bible was her constant companion all her life. At times of stress, she found consolation in the Word of God.